NAZI PILOTS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20142, 11 January 1940, Page 11

NAZI PILOTS

REFUSE TO FLY IN DARK MACHINES NOT SUITABLE COPENHAGEN, Dec. 3. Business men who have returned to Denmark after visiting Hamburg say that reports are circulating there of disaffection in the German Air Force. Pilots of Messerschmitt fighters at airfields round Hamburg have recently, it is declared, refused to take off on night flights because, they maintain, the machines are not suitable for flying in the dark. They have such a high landing speed that it is almost impossible to ground them safely unless the airfield is floodlit, and so made a target for enemy bombers. The business men state that a British reconnaissance plane returning recently from a night flight over Northern Germany came quite low over an airfield, which remained fully lighted. No guns were fired, but after a time the flood lights were switched off. No German fighters took the air, and the British machine was allowed to continue on its way home unmolested. Air Marshal Sir John Salmond. speaking at Home not long ago, said: “Pilots who have been over Germany tell me there is a type of German fighting machine which they believe cannot be flown at night.”